May 24, 2002

I've used Evite for a long time, both as a recipient of invitations and as the originator. Initially being suspicious of the service as a potential spam outlet, I've used a special evite-specific email address for my main account. (Unfortunately, there's no control over which email address others use to invite you to events.) I've never received spam at that adddress, and remain confident that, as long as the company doesn't change hands, they are safe to use. Having used them once again for a recent event, I decided to revisit the issue and read through their privacy policy. A couple of sections are disappointingly unclear at first glance, but after careful examination, I'm convinced that Evite's policy backs up their claim to be "spam free." Backing the policy is a relatively big brand: Evite "is wholly owned by Ticketmaster and operated by the Citysearch.com division of Ticketmaster." Though some people might not trust Ticketmaster.

Looking for authoritative examples connecting Evite with poor practices or potential violations of their privacy policy: This November 2000 NYTimes article (on page 3) mentions Evite as an example of a company that puts tracking GIFs in HTML email, as part of an early lawsuit regarding privacy and disclosure on the web. A Usenet search comes up with a couple examples of Evite being used as a relay, which Evite actively prohibits, and which makes no use of Evite's customer list; plus one or two direct complaints with no details provided. A Google search for "evite spam" produces Evite's own site at the top (matching the phrase "Evite does not spam. Read our Privacy Policy to learn more"), plus dozens of other pages, all in Spanish-- because "evite" is Spanish for "avoid."

SpamAssassin is a popular spam flagging utility because it's extremely picky about what it considers "legitimate" email. SpamAssassin flags Evite mail as spam not because evite.com is on a spam blacklist, but because when I send you an evite, it originates from evite.com's mail servers but has my email address (at a non-evite.com server) in the From line. SA thinks this is suspicious and flags it, just to be safe.

Nevertheless, people still complain that Evite should be avoided, just because their service involves the mentioning of many email addresses and so could possibly be up to no good. Spam and the practice of spamming are so detested that simply telling someone that a company spams is enough to convince them beyond all repair, and the nature of an invitation service makes Evite automatically suspicious. SpamAssassin's flagging behavior doesn't help much, either. I'm compelled to jump to Evite's defense, if only because I'd like to be able to use them without getting yelled at by my invitees because they think I just signed them up permanently for a Make Porn Fa$t newsletter.

Beyond being able to trust certain commercial no-cost web services, I've often considered developing web services for private use. While Evite is a powerful and sophisticated implementation, an invitation service is a relatively trivial web/email application. If I built one and limited account creation to just me and my friends, we wouldn't have to worry about spam or annoying ads. It runs counter to the open spirit of the web (which I heartily endorse), but the resource demands of opening such a service to the public is why commercial services have had to bury users in ads and sell their email lists in the first place. I would probably open the software, however, so others could set up their own such services... Right after I finish my symphony...

comments...

TheBrad, May 24, 2002 8:39 AM:

I have used eVite almost since it launched and have never, to the best of knowledge, received a single bit of e-mail from them or through them that I didn't actually want. Despite their association with TicketMaster (which is a relatively recent development and makes me itch a bit), I have absolutely no qualms about using them and recommend them to friends.



Also, they've clearly made some performance tweaks to the system. The difference between my last large-scale invitation (for Break Bread with Brad in Austin) and the latest is amazing, a marked improvement in both the editing interface and the speed/responsiveness of the application.

Spike, May 24, 2002 8:47 AM:

I haven't used Evite in a while, but I always found it to be a good service and never received any spam.

jessamyn, May 29, 2002 7:42 AM:

I haven't gotten spam from evite -- my objection is completely different, and twofold:



1. I don't like getting email about the event that tells me nothing about the event. Granted, this is up to the evite inviter at some level, but if the primary announcement of the evite is email, it stands to reason that the email itself migh thave some useful information in it like date or time. It doesn't, it contains a link to a web page which may or may not have information that I would be flagging. If people send personal emails inviting me to parties, they *always* include this info, even if they have a web page where the party is linked. Evite web pages seem to take a long time to load, but maybe this is just nitpicking on my part.



2. I don't like to have a reason to RSVP no, or maybe I don't need everyone to see it. declining via the web page mean that not only does my potential host see the turn-down, but everyone else does too.



3. [hey, I have one more!] the evite 'handle' system means that when I look at the list of RSVPers to someone else's party, I often have no clue at all who is going [which is supposedly one of evite's strong suits] other than whysperfyre, badboy7656 and mememememe. This is not helpful.



I'm aware that the level of added value that evite offers is tempting to the party giver, but for smaller informal get togethers, the hassle of dealing with an evite has actually kept me from attending [or allowed me to forget an event since I file my todo list in email]. I am happy to miss parties if I space out on them this way, but I think it's a shame.

Dan Sanderson, May 30, 2002 5:01 AM:

Well, both the contents of the initial invitation email and the ability to see other people's responses are configurable by the inviter. I wish evite gave better control over the appearance of evite-sent emails (the subject line just says "Evite", IIRC), though they have to set some limits to prevent abuse as a mail relay. As for the way names appear in invitee lists, the ability to quickly add new people by entering their email address is a feature, as is not requiring that all invitees have evite accounts. If the email address entered doesn't match an evite account, the only other choice is to display the email address, which would open the door to address harvesters in the case of large, public invites. Displaying part of the email address is the only real option, short of demanding that the inviter enter a name for each email address (though having that option would be nice).



There are plenty of design quirks to complain about with evite, to be sure. Particularly interesting are the design flaws that encroach upon party etiquette, especially when at odds with Internet etiquette. evite is probably the best, most developed invite service on the 'net, but given that it hasn't changed much in a long time, I get the impression that nobody is maintaining it any more.

Derek, June 1, 2002 2:53 AM:

What I want to know is, why hasn't some clever hacker whipped up an open source DIY version of evite for us all to install on our own servers? I mean, it really is a pretty simple app, right? And it would solve all these pesky privacy concerns. Brad - wouldn't you rather host the invite pages on bradlands.com?

Miss Manners, March 11, 2004 10:35 AM:

Please, do NOT paste other people's email addresses into ANY web site, even if you yourself have not experienced spam coming from that site. You never know, A) when they are going to be purchased by an evil corporation; B) when they are going to change their privacy policy; C) when they are going to have an insider (rogue employee) "borrow" the email list for nefarious purposes; D) when they are going to have their servers cracked, exposing your friend's email address to joe random cracker. Everything you wrote above does not take A, B, C, and D into account.

ObGoogleBomb: <a href="LINK REMOVED">vacation</a>

Dan Sanderson, March 11, 2004 10:40 AM:

Why thank you, Miss Manners, for your insight. Special thanks for the "ObGoogleBomb", which originally contained a link to a flattering GW Bush bio using a link text of "vacation". Your intentions were clear, so I removed the link. Your otherwise relevant comment is intact. May you continue to post such shining examples of netiquette to other people's personal websites.

Steve Portigal, June 21, 2004 6:17 AM:

I like the idea of evite for managing relatively large invite lists (say, more than 20), but I'm probably never using it again (after years of infrequent usage) - the invites get trapped by various spam filters, there is no bounceback service so if I have an old email address for someone, I'll never know.



In addition, people don't use it in the way I'd expect - as a proxy to a conversation with me, people don't feel the need to reply and say if they are coming or not - so the service it promises - information about my guest list - is not actually available because the social problem of how people interact with disembodied invitations hasn't been solved. Blagh.

ted moy, August 26, 2005 8:02 AM:

It took me a few years through research and trial & error to figure out how to avoid spam. I created an email address with Google's Gmail Jan. 2005, I gave it VERY exclusive list of people whom I trust and educated as to how to avoid inadvertantly spamming me (i.e.: cutting & pasting a website and emailing it to me as opposed to submitting my email in their website to allow the site to send me the info). I'm confident that NO ONE in my list submitted my name otherwise. My email address consists of letters, dots, and numbers - no program would've been able to randomly have generated such an email address. In regards to purchasing online and submitting my email address, I use www.spammotel.com to mask my email address; it's not from my online companies I deal with either. Then last month I gave my dentist my email address and he sent me an evite to invite me to grand opening of his office party; a few weeks later, I received an email from eWaldonBooks.com. I deleted it. 2 weeks later, I received another one. I tagged it as spam.

So, in conclusion... evite DOES SPAM! Be forewarned.

Lisa, October 30, 2005 8:11 AM:

Could be coincidence. One possible connection that appears causal isn't enough to be certain that evite was the source of your spam. Your email address could have gotten harvested out of someone's address book.

That said, I don't like evite either for a number of the same reasons already stated. In particular, like jessamyn, I too don't liike having to go to another website to find out invitation details. I mean, when paper invites were the norm, you didn't get a paper invite that said "you're invited to an event, but go consult this other source to find out when and where this event is being held." This isn't an evite only problem -- I've had pre-evite "hand-generated" email invitations to events that consisted soly of "you're invited! go to URL for more information", but evite invitations seem to be particularly prone to this kind of uesless invitation.

Since I don't use evite, I don't know the answer to this question: are invitees required to register in order to respond to an evite invitation?

Dan Sanderson, October 30, 2005 12:15 PM:

To answer your last question: No, you do not need to be a registered user to response to an Evite invitation.

As for having to go to a web site to pick up the invitation, the service is free and ad-supported, and the only other alternative would be to include ads in the invite e-mail, which I would consider less preferable and more likely to trigger spam filters. I'm pretty sure Evite tried an ad-buyout (for-pay) option, and I'm pretty sure it failed.

Dan, January 9, 2006 4:09 PM:

I am concerned by the section of Evite's privacy policy which states: "Evite reserves the right to amend this privacy policy at its sole discretion."

Whilst this could be benign, it does leave them entitled to change for the worse later on. I am always concerned by commercial websites that don't appear to have a revenue model beyond "we'll sell advertising and hopefully someone will buy us".

What anoys me the most is how others (friends) seem quite comfortable giving my email address away to third parties without my permission. It's like those "send this page to a friend" forms for which 99% of people don't understand the potential risk.